class balance

[Atarlost]

Matthew Downie wrote:

Adamantine Dragon wrote:

For those claiming that the classes are finely balanced already, I'll believe that when every tactical treatise I see published on the boards doesn't start with "first go after the casters..."

So you're saying this proves that casters are frail and fragile squishies who can be picked off in the first round compared to the nigh invulnerable martial classes who can only be worn down gradually? ;)

Oddly, you never see anyone say "first, go after the baggage mules" even though they're the squishiest things in the party after a few levels. Probably because they don't cast spells.

[notabot]

Matthew Downie wrote:

Adamantine Dragon wrote:

For those claiming that the classes are finely balanced already, I'll believe that when every tactical treatise I see published on the boards doesn't start with "first go after the casters..."

So you're saying this proves that casters are frail and fragile squishies who can be picked off in the first round compared to the nigh invulnerable martial classes who can only be worn down gradually? ;)

You go after the "squishies" because you can ignore the big dumb fighter because he chose to spend his gold on his big dumb sword instead of a super expensive item that grants flight.

Does remind me of an encounter I recently used on my party. The main enemy was a fighter with CC feats and a reach weapon enlarged blocking access to a room. In the room was some archer mooks and a single caster lobbing spells. Party was super focused on getting past the fighter and took some nasty AoO and got smacked around hard. When they finally get to the caster they found out it was just an adept who had already blown all of his good spells by round 2 and was just lobbing lightning bolt from a wand for 5d6 damage(which at they level they were playing is like nothing to worry about).

Turning tactical conventions against the party as a GM is fun.

[Sloanzilla]

First go after the casters does not prove they are overpowered, it proves that you use cavalry to take out artillery.

I'm assuming the baggage mules thing was a joke and not a horrible attempt of logic. Four people (and no baggage mules) are attempting to kill you. You logically go after the one who is best at killing you (or crowd-controlling you) and easiest to kill.

The actual fair counter to this argument is that a mirror-imaged, stoneskinned arcane caster is not the easiest of the group to kill.

[SPCDRI]

Matthew Downie wrote:

Adamantine Dragon wrote:

For those claiming that the classes are finely balanced already, I'll believe that when every tactical treatise I see published on the boards doesn't start with "first go after the casters..."

So you're saying this proves that casters are frail and fragile squishies who can be picked off in the first round compared to the nigh invulnerable martial classes who can only be worn down gradually? ;)

They're flying, invisible, incorporeal, Mirror Image and a Stoneskin up, etc...

A few spells up are better than AC.

I always know...

"Go for the magic!" but um...

How do you go for it?

[Coriat]

For the benefit of the OP's question, here is a link summarizing the answers from one of the many previous versions of this thread.

link.

[Ashiel]

notabot wrote:

Matthew Downie wrote:

Adamantine Dragon wrote:

For those claiming that the classes are finely balanced already, I'll believe that when every tactical treatise I see published on the boards doesn't start with "first go after the casters..."

So you're saying this proves that casters are frail and fragile squishies who can be picked off in the first round compared to the nigh invulnerable martial classes who can only be worn down gradually? ;)

You go after the "squishies" because you can ignore the big dumb fighter because he chose to spend his gold on his big dumb sword instead of a super expensive item that grants flight.

Does remind me of an encounter I recently used on my party. The main enemy was a fighter with CC feats and a reach weapon enlarged blocking access to a room. In the room was some archer mooks and a single caster lobbing spells. Party was super focused on getting past the fighter and took some nasty AoO and got smacked around hard. When they finally get to the caster they found out it was just an adept who had already blown all of his good spells by round 2 and was just lobbing lightning bolt from a wand for 5d6 damage(which at they level they were playing is like nothing to worry about).

Turning tactical conventions against the party as a GM is fun.

I find this highly amusing. :P

[Gronka]

Malwing wrote:

MrSin wrote:

Malwing wrote:

I heard wind that there was an argument that there was little to no class power disparity from someone at Paizo. Is there a link to this argument?

Here's James Jacobs on it. Not a big fan of that statement myself. Mostly because it claims balance is the GM's job. Bleh.

I can sorta see where he's going regardless of whether or not I agree.

To many times I've seen parties with no casters fall apart when coming across an otherwise easily bypassed encounter, and just as often I've seen the same thing happen when the party is full of full casters that blow their good spells early and die to the first thing to touch them. An unbalanced party can kill you pretty fast.

I also try to GM in ways that make martials more useful by making creative terrain, favoring groups of monsters, having monsters use strategies that target casters. I am also not a fan of 5 minute work days and will totally roll random encounters when people sleep in dangerous places, and if my players don't stop big bad evil guy TONIGHT then he finished his big bad evil plan.

Where I disagree is when you bring in the amount of situations where non-magical classes cannot do ANYTHING. That number is pretty high and one of the worst feelings in the world is twiddling my thumbs for half an hour.

Pretty much. Fighters only get 2 skill points a level; usually that means they can't even climb or swim as well as the rogue or bard. Or jump as well because they don't get acrobatics in class.or perception. The big dumb barbarian can afford to max all of those, while the skilled fighter who has trained for longer can't. I would change that.

And then spells basically make most of those skill points useless anyways.
I really think once you have a high enough climb or swim, you should gain a climb or swim speed. And I don't think wizards should get fly in class, unless they come from a species that flies naturally anyways. I think acrobatics you could combine acrobatics with fly. With those changes, if you need someone to fly and need to make sure he won't plummet to the ground, it is better for the wizard to cast it on the fighter or rogue or other mundane character.

[Harleequin]

I once was in a game where a ninja took out both of the party 9th level casters in 4 rounds.....

[HWalsh]

Gronka wrote:

Pretty much. Fighters only get 2 skill points a level; usually that means they can't even climb or swim as well as the rogue or bard. Or jump as well because they don't get acrobatics in class.or perception. The big dumb barbarian can afford to max all of those, while the skilled fighter who has trained for longer can't. I would change that.

Weapon Master's Handbook

By 9th level (once at lvl 5-8, once at 9+) acrifice 2 feats, for two instances of Advance Weapon Training: Versatile Training. You easily have the feats and then a human Fighter with a 7 Int suddenly has (effectively) 6 skill ranks per level. (1 normal, 1 from race, 4 skills at max rank)

[Gronka]

HWalsh wrote:

Gronka wrote:

Pretty much. Fighters only get 2 skill points a level; usually that means they can't even climb or swim as well as the rogue or bard. Or jump as well because they don't get acrobatics in class.or perception. The big dumb barbarian can afford to max all of those, while the skilled fighter who has trained for longer can't. I would change that.

Weapon Master's Handbook

By 9th level (once at lvl 5-8, once at 9+) acrifice 2 feats, for two instances of Advance Weapon Training: Versatile Training. You easily have the feats and then a human Fighter with a 7 Int suddenly has (effectively) 6 skill ranks per level. (1 normal, 1 from race, 4 skills at max rank)

But a fighter should not have to give up one or two feats for 2 or 4 more skill points. (which is what it comes down to for your average fighter) =/

[Blackwaltzomega]

Large gaps in character strength are an inherent part of the game at this point, and I feel like a big part of that are two ongoing design decisions.

First, the app store magic system, where there is a spell for basically anything the designers can imagine. With enough research, it is possible to find a spell for just about everything, which means a GM who does not have an encyclopedic knowledge of the game's massively overstuffed spell list index is going to run into some trouble caster-proofing their plots.

Secondly, the overly chain-heavy feat system. Feats are meant to be the warrior's big edge over the mage, but the design is really not in a great place. A lot of the time you're burning feats for basic competence with a character concept like wielding two weapons rather than being able to excel at something. Paizo tends to design like people have feats coming out of their ears when the reverse is usually true. I suspect the idea of this is to make the fighter feel better because he can actually complete the ridiculously convoluted feat chains, but in practice this just means most of the cool tricks you can do with weaponry are gated off at levels most campaigns never reach so you're stuck with the boring feats you can take at reasonable levels, and the fighter is less excited about his bonus feats because he's mostly using them to pay his taxes until he qualifies for the thing he actually WANTS, occasionally glancing enviously over at the Ranger, who is skipping prerequisites willy-nilly.

I'm OK with there being a gap between the party's ace and the weakest character, but ideally if the party's ace is a 10, I think the weakest character should be an 8. Based on my own play experience, however, it's more common to see the ace as a 10 and the weakest character as a 4, and I get mighty annoyed when people seem to imply it's a failure of GMing that I am allowing the players of mages to use spells the way the rules say they work and noting this allows them to do a lot more than the rules say their nonmagical compatriots are capable of. I'm aware that it's an unwritten rule of the game that someone playing a rogue should filch and optimize and do everything short of actually cheating to get their character the edge they need to stay involved while the player of a mage should strenuously avoid playing their class to its full potential, but these are not actual rules of the game, and the actual rules say there are some classes that have a lot more going for them than others.

[Michael Sayre]

Holy Necromancy Threadman! The more things change, the more they stay the same I guess...

So, for me, class imbalance is primarily a function of versatility, and opportunity cost.

Martials (of which Fighter is the prime example) are typically viewed as being less powerful, not because they can't swing a pointy stick harder than anyone else more times a day(they can), but because swinging a pointy stick really only covers so many situations, and often those situations don't actually take all that long. One of the ways that martials get better, acquiring feats, is also generally much more focused and less efficient for problem solving, requiring a larger percentage of total resources and offering less benefit and flexibility.

Casters are typically regarded as more powerful because they can prepare solutions for a wider array of situations, generally with a much smaller percentage of their total resources dedicated towards resolving a particular task. The catch here, is that playing a spellcaster to full potential requires a much higher degree of system mastery than playing a Fighter or most other martials. Getting the right mix of solutions (i.e. spells), will often require a bit of research. That being said, someone with a good degree of system mastery in the game can easily prepare a selection of spells that can cover almost any situation, and often in the most efficient and effective way. Above and beyond being able to successfully interact with almost any type of challenge, many spells can actually change the nature of an encounter; I've often seen a wizard or sorcerer turn "defeat the fearsome minotaur guardian" into "follow your helpful minotaur directly to the McGuffin".

[Arbane the Terrible]

Have we gotten a Bingo yet? I think we're pretty close, all I need is for someone to complain about 'anime'.